momagri, movement for a world agricultural organization, is a think tank chaired by Christian Pèes.It brings together, managers from the agricultural world and important people from external perspectives, such as health, development, strategy and defense. Its objective is to promote regulationof agricultural markets by creating new evaluation tools, such as economic models and indicators,and by drawing up proposals for an agricultural and international food policy.

Hurricane Sandy has made Haiti tremble once again

November 12, 2012

While Haiti is still recovering from the destruction left by the devastating earthquake that struck on 12th January 2010, now Hurricane Sandy which hit the island on 25th October and for three days reaped havoc with consequences on food security and health that could be catastrophic.

The most numerous victims of Hurricane Sandy are Haitian and in order to cope with the emergency, the government has allocated 6.3 million euros, and appealed for international solidarity.

The health situation is worrying because of a resurgence of cholera cases. The situation is the same for the significant damage (collapsed houses, blocked roads, destroyed plantations...) which is completing the paralysis of the country.

However, one of the immediate concerns of the authorities is the increase in food prices due to the destruction of crops and subsistence crops: banana, breadfruit, corn, coffee...

Haitian agriculture suffered the most when the Hurricane hit: losses are estimated at more than 100 billion USD and 70% of crops were destroyed. This “agricultural disaster” as described by some of the island’s inhabitants, is particularly worrying because the foundations of the Haitian economy (latent crisis economy, vulnerability to exogenous shocks ...) have been weakened, political tensions are palpable with demonstrations against the high cost of living which have proliferated in recent months and are threatening to resurface at any moment.

One of the emergency solutions proposed by the authorities in Port-au-Prince is using the island’s food stocks, but these stocks are at a dangerously low level after not having been replenished since Hurricane Isaac last August.

The Haitian example demonstrates the need for national and regional strategic food stocks, mobilized to serve as emergency relief to vulnerable populations in the event of a food crisis. A measure dear to José Graziano da Silva, Director-General of the FAO, and President François Hollande who in September, jointly affirmed their determination to establish “buffer stocks, as well as other safety net mechanisms – in the event of crisis that could threaten national food security”.

But it must be kept in mind that food security is not only affected by weather or epizootic disasters but more so by brutal price reversals. Faced with these two factors, which in the current context tend to be mutually underpinning, emergency stocks should be backed up by regulatory stocks in order to effectively combat agricultural price hyper-volatility, the principal factor for global food insecurity where 60% of people who suffer from hunger are farmers.

For such a system to be efficient, a renewed global governance of agriculture which regroups all the international institutions concerned with agricultural issues should emerge. Because as pointed out be José Graziano Da Silva in an FAO press release on 8th November “it is not drought or floods that cause crises, but lack of governance”.